Apply or remove cell borders on a worksheet

By using predefined border styles, you can quickly add a border around cells or ranges of cells. If predefined cell borders do not meet your needs, you can create a custom border.

Note: Cell borders that you apply appear on printed pages. If you do not use cell borders but want worksheet gridline borders to be visible on printed pages, you can display the gridlines. For more information, see Print with or without cell gridlines.

To apply a new or different border style, click the arrow next to Borders
, and then click a border style.

Tip: To apply a custom border style or a diagonal border, click More Borders. In the Format Cells dialog box, on the Border tab, under Line and Color, click the line style and color that you want. Under Presets and Border, click one or more buttons to indicate the border placement. Two diagonal border buttons
are available under Border.

To remove cell borders, click the arrow next to Borders
, and then click No Border
.

The Borders button displays the most recently used border style. You can click the Borders button (not the arrow) to apply that style.

If you apply a border to a selected cell, the border is also applied to adjacent cells that share a bordered cell boundary. For example, if you apply a box border to enclose the range B1:C5, the cells D1:D5 acquire a left border.

If you apply two different types of borders to a shared cell boundary, the most recently applied border is displayed.

A selected range of cells is formatted as a single block of cells. If you apply a right border to the range of cells B1:C5, the border is displayed only on the right edge of the cells C1:C5.

If you want to print the same border on cells that are separated by a page break, but the border appears on only one page, you can apply an inside border. This way, you can print a border at the bottom of the last row of one page and use the same border at the top of the first row on the next page. Do the following:

Select the rows on both sides of the page break.

Click the arrow next to Borders
, and then click More Borders.

Under Presets, click the Inside button
.

Under Border, in the preview diagram, remove the vertical border by clicking it.

To customize the line style or color of cell borders or erase existing borders, you can use the Draw Borders options. To draw cell borders, you'll first select the border type, then the border color and line style, and select the cells that you want to add a border around. Here's how: